Breaking the World at Dusk
by cane-jian
Summary: I've always respected Shirou Emiya. I don't know why, whether it's his ideals, his nature, or some other factor . . . but taking his place? Why? . . . I think that I can handle this, don't know if I can handle what I KNOW is coming. But I have to try. And . . . knowing what I know . . . I can't wait for "The Night" to start my quest. Even if it risks Breaking the World at Dusk. SI
1. Waking Up in Hell

**AN: 1:00 AM Sat April 13th. 2019. Well, I couldn't help myself, and since BITN ch 13 is taking forever(should have guessed I'd hit a block when I got to 13) I decided that I might as well follow my muse back into the Nasuverse.**

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**POV: ME**

I woke up to the sound of screaming, and the all encompassing smell of smoke.

At first, I wondered. Where was I? what I was doing here? After all, this wasn't my bed. That wasn't my door. This wasn't my room. But, as the overpowering smell of smoke flooded my nostrils, and burned my throat, I was forced to push that thought to the side as I realized that all the signs pointed to a fire nearby.

As I blasted out from under the covers, throwing the blankets of as if they were burning me, the wall on the far side of the ignited so quickly one would think someone had previously coated it in oil.

Shocked by the flame, I froze for an instant, my mind freezing up. The sudden adrenaline rush that came after said moment of stillness snapped me out of it, and sent me into a mad rush to find an escape rout, which I found in the form of a large, closed window.

Shooting to the portal to the outside world, I attempted to open it, only to find the sill to be to hot to touch. Turning around to try and find something to pry it open with, I was horrified to find that the fire was spreading far to fast, as if everything was mad of paper, and had already covered over half of the room.

Without warning, the fire suddenly surged up, hitting the ceiling. The sudden surge of burning death sent a pulse of primal fear coursing through me unlike any I had experienced before, and before I had realized what I was happening, I found myself tumbling unto the ground outside in a hail of broken glass, unable to remember whether or not I had been blasted through it by an explosion or had jumped through the glass, as I was to preoccupied with the sudden bout of horrid sensations that greeted my newly liberated self.

My first, gasping breath of the outside air was a mouthful of smoke. Thick, black smoke that seemed to cling to the inside of my throat, and burned. Burned like rubbing citrus juices into torn skin, only a dozen times worse. Exhaling ended up feeling like a late-throat cold coughing fit, and brought tears to my eyes.

The sound that greeted my ears was a horrible combination of screams, moans and ghastly howls, that echoed inside my head as if it was some great cavern, and stabbed into my got like a dagger of ice, seeming to both sap the strength from my mind and drive it to my legs, sending me running shakily down the street.

I shot down the middle of the road at top, not paying any attention to the buildings on either side of my beyond that they were _all on fire_ and _the screaming_ and I needed to _get away from the smoke_. Glancing back behind me even as I choked on the noxious fumes, I saw what appeared to a tide of _lava_ that had a slight blue/purple glow to it.

Redoubling my speed(_'why am I already exhausted? My legs shouldn't be burning like this yet.'_), I took off down the street as quickly a my aching joints could carry me(_'Why does it feel like I'm running on nails?'_), down several streets and around several corners, though always away from that horrible flow of . . .whatever.

I had just rounded another corner, when I was thrown ass over tea-kettle to the side as what appeared to be a meteor slammed into the asphalt and exploded. I like to think that my thought were abnormally organized as I got back up, seeing as I had landed on my head and immediately come to the conclusion that I was near a newborn volcano that was spewing out material, and took of running again, only to find that the fire was now ahead of me as well.

None the less I pressed on . . . only to realize that I _should_ be taking shelter as a dozen more large, burning pieces of stone impacted the ground and houses around me.

* * *

I regained consciousness half buried in ash and broken pieces of wood and concrete, feeling as If someone had put me through a meat grinder, then put a jackhammer set to "liquefy" between my ears for good measure. I dragged myself halfway out using my arms, only for said appendages to give out on me, letting me head fall onto the ground painfully, my legs still in the densely packed powder. I breathed in through my mouth only for the air to again, mercilessly burn fiery trails down my throat.

Digging out what strength I had left, I managed to drag the rest of my body out of the grey ashes and still slightly burning wood chips, forcing of the chunks of artificial stone, and struggle back unto to my feet. Taking me first step, the soles of my shoe-less feet felt like walking on hot coals and a sea of broken glass all an once, the pain lancing all the way up my legs, and I nearly overbalanced to fall onto my face, only catching myself at the last moment, hands on my knees.

From this position, a wave of nausea, I found myself choking out . . . whatever the last thing I had eaten was, a fresh wave of bile surging up my throat every time I tried to inhale. By the time I dry heaved for the last time, I was so light headed I could barely keep my head on straight, let alone think with it. My retching fit finale done, I gasped in several choking breaths, which burned worse than anything I had ever felt.

By the time I could begin walking again, my head was so screwed up between the lightness and the pounding that the fact that I could register I needed to move was a miracle. My gait could barely be called a walk with how shaky it was, and I barely managed to navigate my between the massive pieces of cement scattered around the area.

I staggered around in circles for who knows how long, my mind a mess unable to think anything coherent enough to translate into words, simply looking for a safety that was not visible in any of the burning directions. Finally, my lizard brain decided that the direction from which to loudest moaning was coming was best, and I set off.

I walked shakily, ever step an effort, every motion all but a herculean trial, only made worse by what had to a solid _foot_ of ash coating the ground(in the _shallow places_), clinging to my legs. The only conscious thought to pass through my mind a continuous, back to back stream of _'dear God help me' _s_._ Every step sent a pulse of pain pummelling into my brain(_on top_ of the pounding and the light headedness), my neck and skull felt like it was splitting apart with every sway of my body.

I stared shakily into the distance, my eyes watering from the smoke, my vision so blurry that I could barely make out the next burning building in the seemingly never ending row that I was walking down.

I was around the time that my tears finally managed to clear my vision enough for me to effectively see my surroundings that I finally saw my first other person in this hellscape.

With my blurry eyes, all I could make out was the rough outline of a person laying in the ash. The sight gave me pause, trying to register their existence as best my thrice damned head was able at the time. After a second or staring at the outline I heard moaning. "Help . . . me . . . " the figure, who sounded quite young, stretched out one hand in my direction, their whole blurred image shivering. Without thinking, I reached out an took their hand, the motion sending my own into spasms of pain, only for the offered appendage to crumble to ash between my fingers.

The person in the question drew their arm shakily to their face, their head pointed towards it in a way that lead my far-to-cloudy-vision to believe they were staring at it, before the entirety of their body likewise crumbled into ash and I was left to question weather or not they had ever even been there as I continued my walk.

Soon enough, it became apparent to my rapidly clearing eyes that my first encounter was hardly a hallucination(either that or this was all one big one). I began to find other people in the sea of ash and despair, people clawing through the ocean of grey dust to pull someone out, only for the liberated body to turn to powder in their grasp even as the person I had found earlier had. People who were desperately trying to enter burning houses to reach the ones still trapped inside. People simple stumbling through this hell the way I was, empty eyed.

I tried helping two more people after the first, only for them to crumble between my fingers the way the first had. After that I simply walked, trying to escape this pit of despair and suffering.

I don't know how long I shambled forward like that, exhaustion beating its way through every cell of my body, until the only reason I could still move was that I didn't have the presence of mind to realize I _could_ stop, that I didn't have to keep my limbs moving(which by then felt like they were burning from inside out), that I didn't have to keep gasping wheezing breaths that felt like spikes in my throat and acid in my lungs. I couldn't stop. Not, at least, until I fell.

I suppose their was an awkward angle to the street under the ash, or maybe a stone, or other such obstruction, but the end result was the same. I fell onto my side, rolled unto my back, and I laid their, starring up, eyes half open, at the blue-black moon that seemed to radiate hopelessness like light, what remained of my energy seemingly being leached into the ground.

And I watched the moon. I watched it rain the lava I had seen flood the street earlier. I watched the sphere of horror occasionally pulse, like some perversion of a heart, spewing an abnormally large blast of liquid that seemed to sent up large gouts of smoke. I watched the fires spread. I watched the moon. That is . . . until my view was partially blocked blocked by a black silhouette.

It was clearly a person, hunched over, rooting through the rubble on the horizon. Their figure was the first motion I had seen in several minutes that wasn't the flickering of the flames or the shifting of the rubble. Slowly, the figure moved in my direction, overturning any pieces of wood and concrete large enough to cover a human body.

Feeling the urge to reach out to him, I slowly raised my arm in his direction, the simple motion sapping what remained of my strength. The raised limb fell to my side unseen by the digging man. The sound that it made as it struck the ash, however slight it was, made the figure turn to face me.

Freezing for a moment, the man seemed to just stair at me for a few seconds, before he ran to me, tripping and stumbling over the same pieced of concrete I had weaved around earlier in his rush to reach me.

Crouching down by my side, he slowly lifted me up of the ground and began to check over me, sobbing "Your alive, your alive" over and over again. Something seemed wrong about the motion, as if I was lighter than I should be, but my mind had been all but destroyed by the past events, and I thought nothing of it.

As the man held me, my vision began to fade, the last thing I saw being a golden glow lighting up the mans silhouette.

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**AN: 2:14 AM, April 15th, 2019. OK, that is two days two write, and one to proofread, so I'd say that's all right. I was planing to add a few post fire scenes, but decided to skip them entirely. So, until next time.**


	2. Just Your Average day in the Emiya House

**AN: 11:57 PM, April 15th, 2019. Ok, time to write the next chapter! . . . and maybe add an omake at the end . . . **

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**POV: Kiritsugu Emiya**

_'Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep!'_

Kiritsugu waved a towel desperately at the fire alarm, trying to clear the air around it enough that it would turn off even as said alarm blared obnoxiously. Really, He shouldn't have installed said alarm so near the kitchen, but his pride wouldn't let him move it now that he had, as a certain tiger would never let him live it down.

_'Beep, Beep, Beep!'_

The alarm continued to blare, and Kiritsugu herd the sound of a door opening behind him. "Tried making your own breakfast again, old man?" a tired voice asked dryly. "You know you always burn it."

Turning around, the magus found his adoptive son, Kotora, staring him down, Amber eyes burning into him, arms folded, wearing an expression that was half sleepy, half unimpressed.

_'Beep, Beep, Be . . . smack!'_

The alarm was cut off as it was covered in a layer of ether clumps, which had came shooting out of the palm of the boys hand, the clay like substance coating it completely and muffling the sound.

"Honestly old man." the boy groaned, scratching the back of head and yawning. "You really should've just woken me up, I can catch up on sleep in the afternoon. You know you could burn water if I let you. I swear, someone must of placed a kitchen related curse on you. No wait, that doesn't make sense . . . maybe a curse of starvation, and my magic resistance is to high for it to effect me? . . ." the boy rambled, as he usually did when he was tired.

"Anyway," he continued. "I know you hate waking me up early, but that's the third time that damn alarm got me up. This month. And is only the tenth." the(assume-ably) nine year old finished, causing Kiritsugu to look away and cough into his fist to hide his embarrassment.

It was true he didn't like waking Kotora early, the boy lost enough sleep do to his constant nighttime flashbacks. Of course, his attempts up to this point had usually resulted in him going hungry until the boy woke up, or having to eat "Hockey pucks" as his son so flippantly put it. Maybe he really was cursed in the kitchen . . .

Ignorant of the thoughts of the former magus killer, Kotora shoved past Kiritsugu and began scrape the burn food off of the dishes, preparing to make the days first meal the proper way, yawning every few seconds.

Kiritsugu, seeing that he had nothing to contribute, slinked out before his son could continue to chew him out for his early morning stupidity.

Shifting into the living room, Kiritsugu turned the TV to some meaningless drama show for the sake of background noise, sat in the big, tiger print easy chair, which Kotora had convinced Raiga to get him as a gag gift the previous Christmas.

Leaning back into the criminally comfortable chair(He really should have thrown it out _before_ trying it. Now he was stuck with the bloody thing), he began to think over his life for the last few years.

After the great Fuyuki fire started, Kiritsugu realized he had lost everything. His wife? Dead. His apprentice/partner? Dead. His daughter? As if Jubstacheit would ever let his see her again. His dream? Crumbling to pieces as his every hypocritical action screamed through his mind, the physical incarnation of his failure right before him

So, lost on an existential level, he simply wandering the ash wastes searching desperately for a single survivor, a single ray of hope. He dug through rubble until his fingers bleed, crying out, hoping for an answer until his voice was hoarse. Every time he found someone who seemed to be still alive, however, the crumbled to ash in his arms, shattering the fragile remains of his sanity even more.

Finally, on the very brink of loosing hope, he spotted Kotora, arm stretched out towards him. He had rushed to the boys side, and feeling the shear power of the curses radiating through his body, implanted Avalon into him, even if said action allowed the curses laid on him earlier that night by the grail to set in.

Despite Avalons presence the boy fell into a brief coma leading Kiritsugu to take the boy to the hospital . . .

* * *

**Flashback**

Kiritsugu hovered outside the hospital door nervously, trying to build up the courage to go inside. The nurse said that the boy had woken up earlier that day, and had thus far hadn't spoken much, in spite of the nurse's best efforts to get him to open up.

Noticing someone coming into the hall, he ducked into the room without thinking. Realizing what he'd done, he steeled his nerves, and looked around the room, searching for the boy, who he found in the bed closest to the window, which he was currently staring out towards the river.

Slowly walking up to the side of the boy's bed, he stood beside the bed and waited to be noticed. After several seconds, the boy turned away from the window to look at the mage. The two just stared at one another for several seconds, before the boy broke the silence, to Kiritsugu's surprise. "Your that man. From the fire. The one who found me."

Kirirsugu stood stock still for a second before he responded. "Yes. Yes, I am." The boy nodded and looked back out the window for a moment, before turning back to him.

"What's your name?" he asked, amber eye's borrowing into the man.

"Kiritsugu. My name, is Kiritsugu Emiya." he responded. "What's yours? Your name that is."

The boy answered immediately, practically blurting out his name. "I'm Kotora." before looking surprised, then concerned, and flopping his head into his pillow to look up at the ceiling.

Kiritsugu smiled, ignoring the boy's brief startled expression. "It's nice to meet you, Kotora." he replied, before falling into a somewhat awkward silence for several minutes. Eventually, Kiritsugu broke the silence with another question. "Your name, how's it spelled? In kanji, that is."

The boy shifted his eyes to look at him for a moment, before looking back to the ceiling, seemingly thinking. After a few seconds, the boy answered. "Ko-Tora. Amber Tiger." and fell silent.

Kiritsugu smiled and nodded. Amber Tiger, that made sense, what with the boy's intense amber eyes. And while yes, his hair was brown, there was definitely a reddish undertone that gave the impression of their being redhead somewhere in his gene pool. His parents could have bet on him having red, or orange hair, which would have really tied the name together.

That line of thinking drilled a hole in the (former) magus killers gut. The boy's parents. While, over the past few days, Kiritsugu had put some investigation into the boy's history, it had come up blank. The doctors blood tests hadn't shown anything, and they couldn't find any record of anyone matching his description. The only one who had the answers were the boy himself, and thus far he hadn't answered any of the nurses questions with anything but "I don't want to talk about it".

Breathing deeply and steeling his nerves again, he asked the loaded question. "So, Kotora, tell be about yourself."

The brunette stole a glance at the mage, but quickly returned to staring at the roof. The minutes ticked on, and the tension soon grew so thick that it could be cut with a knife. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the boy spoke. "I'd . . . really rather not think about . . . before."

Kiritsugu thought on that answer for a moment. Before? What did he mean by that. Before the fire? Or did he mean some thing else? He soon decided it was wisest to just ask. "What do you mean, before?"

The boy inhaled deeply, as if he was going to give a long answer, only to exhale airily. He gestured around him. "Before this. Before being here. I don't want to think about it."

Kiritsugu blinked. He didn't want to think about his past? Why? . . . did something happen? Kiritsugu know all about hard to broach subjects. After . . . what happened with his father, and Shirley . . . and the whole town, really, he closed up and refused to really talk about it for years, and even now, it was a touchy subject for him. He supposed that, say, seeing one's family burn to death, and all those corpses besides . . . yes, that could definitely have the same kind of effect on a child.

The two remained in silence for a minute longer, the silence less uncomfortable than before(that, or he was getting desensitized to it.)

"Why are you here." the boy broke the silence this time, startling Kiritsugu out of his own thoughts. He turned to look at the mage, those intense amber eyes watching him unblinking, and Kiritsugu found it hard to look away from them.

Shaking his head to clear his thought and regaining his focus, he answered. "I don't know myself. I guess . . . I'm looking for something." In response, the boy nodded and looked away, but Kiritsugu wasn't about to let it end their, and asked. "What about you? What are you going to do now?"

The boy looked back to him, clearly surprised, but after a few seconds of stairing, looked down to his feet, a certain melancholy colouring his features. "I don't know. I . . . don't really have anywhere to go. I . . . I can't go home." the boy slumped down with his eyes closed.

Kiritsugu clenched his hands tightly, doing the same with his eyes, and breathed in deeply to steady his racing heart. This was the opening he was looking for. "Then, why don't you come with me." he said, surprising himself with how stable his voice was. "If you don't have anywhere else to go, then I'd be glad to take you in."

Kotora looked up, seemingly surprised, blinking rapidly as if confused, before what Kiritsugu said seemed to set in. After that, he seemed to ponder it for a moment, eyes closed and taking deep breaths. Finally, he responded. "I think . . . that I'd like that, Kiritsugu-san."

* * *

Kiritsugu opened his eyes, roused from his recollection by the voice of his son.

"Hey, old man, get in here, your coffee's done. Oh yeah, and were out of cream, so you'll have to take your coffee black." Kotora called from the dinning room. Grunting, Kiritsugu hauled himself from his criminally comfortable easy chair and walked into the dinning room, where he could look into the kitchen to see his son preparing the food for breakfast.

Once he had everything set up and heating on the stove, he rushed back to his room to get dressed, as he was still wearing his pajamas. Soon enough he returned, running a brush through his hair's curls, just ripping it through any knots he found with a harsh tug, ripping through the obstruction with a sound that always sent chills down Kiritsugu's spine.

Rolling his eye's at Kotora's daily torture of his hair, he nearly spilled his coffee as the door slammed open with a cry of "O-ha-yo!"(good morning) that managed to overlap the sound of a tiger growl over it. "Oh great, the moocher's here." Kotora groaned fondly.

"Hey!" said moocher snarled as she barged into the room like she owned the place. "I am not a moocher!"

"Oh?" Oh, Kotora raised one eyebrow. "Your going to pay for the food then?"

Taiga, aka "the moocher", froze for a second, then rubbed the back of her head while chuckling nervously. "Or did Raiga cut your allowance again?" he continued, rubbing his chin like he was stroking a beard.

She slumped dramatically, tears dripping down her face. "What was it for again?" Kotora asked, scratching his head. "Oh yeah! someone decided that it would be a good idea to borrow the car keys and . . . "

"I just wanted to try out his car! It's not like I crashed it!" Taiga broke down sobbing.

Kiritsugu rolled his eyes and spoke up. "Your only sixteen, Taiga. This isn't America, you'll have to wait a few more years before you can get a license. Your lucky no police noticed you behind the wheel, or you'd be in even more trouble." She collapsed and began pounding the floor like a child having a temper tantrum.

"Kotora looked at Kiritsugu bemusedly. "Are you sure that _she's_ the teenager and I'm the kid, cause it kinda seems like it's the other way around."

"Kiritsuguuuuu! Ko-chan is bullying meeeee!" the tiger of fuyuki jumped to her feet and ran to the mages side, only to drape herself over him, bawling dramatically . . . well, _more_ dramatically.

This spurred Kotora to advance on her with a spray-bottle of all things, snarling "No, bad tiger, get of Kiritsugu!"

"Waaahhhhh!" said tiger howled.

Kiritsugu rolled his eyes at the two's early morning antics. Honestly, they did this almost daily, he was quite numb to it all. If memory served, Taiga would be up any second now to . . .

"Wait a minute, what did you call me?!" yeah, that.

"I called you tiger, tiger."

"I'm not the tiger, your the tiger, Tora!"

"Yeah, but your the one who acts like it . . . not to mention you wear stripes . . . "

"You take that back!" she pulled torashinai out of her dresses skirt, waiving it around menacingly as a demonic aura cloaked her body, a the grizzly visage of a big, stripy cat overlapping her face.

"Put that away and sit down, or no breakfast for you!" And in a blur she was sitting on her knees, at her designated spot at the table, hands on her knees and back hunched, looking up at Kotora with big puffy eyes like a scolded dog.

Unable to resist the urge to rip her himself, Kiritsugu spoke up. "Hey, Kotora, you should go work at the circus, your a great tiger-tamer."

"Kiri-chaaaaan!" and the tears were back.

* * *

"Well, see you guys for dinner!" the tiger rushed out the door, having finished breakfast. Kotora rolled his eyes bemusedly, calling out after her.

"A tip would be nice!" he stared out after her for a few moments, before rolling his eyes again and turning to Kiritsugu with a shrug. "When do you think she'll learn to close the door when she leaves?"

Kiritsugu gave a slight smirk at that and responded. "When she becomes a mature adult."

"Ah, when hell freezes over, got it." Shrugging, Kotora closed the door before turning down the hall into the supply closet, before returning with a large box. "Well, anyway, since she's gone, I can break out dessert."

Kiritsugu gained a highly unimpressed look. "Really, Kotora? Desert right after breakfast . . . " he trailed of after Kotora opened the box, revealing a dark black cake under a lid, and a dozen cupcakes with red icing. " . . . Black licorice cake?"

"I know it's your favourite." Kotora smirked.

"Yes, but you can't stand it."

"Why do you think I made the cupcakes?"

" . . . Alright, but what's the special occasion?" Kiritsugu crossed his arms and raised one eyebrow.

Kotora puffed on cheek out annoyed. "What? You forgot? Its the second anniversary of when you officially adopted me!"

Kiritsugu paused and thought back to the date. It really was, wasn't it? Huh.

* * *

**AN: 1:19 AM, April 21st, 2019. Ok, I give up. I finished this Thursday, and have been trying to make it longer since, but it always comes of as awkward, so I decided to just stick with what I had.**

**Now, the reviews!**

**HPfan7-8: Yes, I won't just copy Shirou's element and origin. That would be uninspired, and I've had a powerset in mind for ages now.**

**Amatsumi: Not nessesarily an unrealistic assumption . . . though I feel that gil would be more in the mode for chunky salsa, that thin cut slices.**

**Guest: I don't know If i'll be able to pull that without an ass-pull, since, you know, Unlimited blade works is about as OP as you can get with a human character.**

**Ok, that it? Good, now I have to be up by nine, as my family has the whole day planned out. Bye.**


	3. Training and Drama

**AN: 10:36 PM, April 21st, 2019. Ok, time to start the next chapter.**

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**POV: Kotora**

Legally, I was home-schooled. This was for a small list of reasons, not the least of which was my prior knowledge, which Kiritsugu had determined that, even with however much I had forgotten, left me comparable to a high-schooler in all aspects of education accept history and language, which to be fair were my worst subjects, and I was in a whole new country to begin with.

The next reason, would be my abnormal sleep scheduled. Whenever I tried to sleep at night, I would find myself reliving the night I first arrived in the world, or, as archer had called it, hell. Because of this, I tried to avoid sleeping as much as possible for my first few weeks here. However, after a month or two, I found that I didn't really get nightmares during say, an afternoon nap.

The discovery that my prana maxed out at 2:30 in the morning only gave me another excuse to justify my staying up until passed three when I woke up at six thirty.

To make up for the lost sleep, I tended to take a long afternoon nap, usually lasting from 1 to just about dinner. Then I woke up, did a half hour bout of exercise, made dinner for three, trained some more, and began studying magecraft, and anything else that interested me, starting at nine. Kiritsugu, being used to the night-life from his days as an assassin. And seeing as he was a poor teacher in anything that was not combat related, usually just left me books and made me promise not to practise anything new without him their to correct me.

That was just weekdays, though. On weekends, when taiga stayed most of the day, I usually found myself either watching anime with her, or . . .

* * *

'Wa-Crack!' A shinai cracked over my helmeted head.

"Keep you head in the game, Ko-chan, or your going to end up covered in even more bruises then last week!" thundered the Tiger of the Wisteria Village, as she took a few steps back to let me recover from the ringing in my ears.

Rubbing the back of my head I groaned in pain, before putting both hands back on the handle of my own shinai and falling into a basic stance. Seeing I was ready, she came again with an overhead sweap which I deflected to the side, before transitioning into a swipe at her side, making her back off to avoid it. Again, she initiated the attack, taking a swing at my wrist, causing me to draw back to avoid it.

As soon as she was done with her attack, I took a step forward, jabbing at her throat, which she both sidestepped and deflected for good measure, before slamming me in the stomach before I could recover, the shear strength behind the blow enough to knock my nine-year-old body to the floor.

Groaning, I crawled my way to my feet, mentally complaining about her longer limbs. I mean, she's sixteen, and she's beating up on a nine year old! That's just messed up. Shouldn't she be holding back a little?!

I mean, sure, normally, I'd appreciate the training, but most forms of modern fencing aren't really applicable to combat. Kendo, for instance, limits what parts of the body you can attack, your hand positions, and what part's of the blade count as a "point".

That is not to say that it has no training value, but I'd still rather stick to something that I could use for real combat. I mean, Taiga is one of the bast duellists in japan(compared to freaking Shiki Ryougi), and she still looses to Saber like its nothing, even when the servant limited herself to human strength. Of course . . . it's possible that sabre cheated with instinct, but that's besides the point. The point is, that the training from Kendo could result in habits that could be exploited in actual battle.

I sigh as I pull myself back to my feet, brushing myself off. I stretched for a moment, conciderin using a few thought based spells to improve my reaction speed. I mean, it helped when training with Kiritsugu . . .

Pushing that thought aside, I retake myself and prepare for a further mauling by the tiger. At least it was better than Kiritsugu's combat training . . .

* * *

The Emiya residence dojo was a good place to train in kendo and martial arts. However, the wooden floors and walls, as durable as they were, were . . . not ideal, for Kiritsugu's training. Because of this, me and Kiritsugu had, through intense labour, elbow-grease, and more than a little hypnosis, dug an huge bunker some thirty feet beneath the house. With five foot thick, rune engraved, concrete walls, and a hard to detect boundary field that suppressed Gaea's influence, so it served as a good workshop.

The traning room itself was a large, circular room with several large lights behind bullet proof glass, again covered in ruins to keep themselves from getting damaged. This was all because Kiritsugu's training was . . . rather over the top. Why, you may ask? That I will answer with another question. _Where does he get all the flipping rubber bullets?!_ Seriously! Does he order them online? Does he get Raiga to buy them for him? Does he make them himself? Where does he get them?

I duck under a swipe of bullets from Kiritsugu's calico, the rubber bullets ricocheting off the wall at still impressive velocity's, forcing me to jump back to avoid getting hit. I took of running, ducking and weaving to try and avoid getting hit. I was well aware that a proper hit from to close could break bones.

I resisted the urge to sigh in relief when the gun began to make click noises, signifying that Kiritsugu was out of bullets. I quickly drew an un-sharpened knife from my belt, spun as fast as possable, and used the momentum to throw the knife at Kiritsugu. He was forced to stop his reloading, dropping his gun in order to catch the knife, even as I charged him.

He drew a pistol of some kind and began to shoot at me, though by this point in time I had gotten the hang of aim dodging the bullets before he fired. Closing the distance, I reared back a fist to punch him in the stomach, only for him to suddenly deflect my fist with the hand holding the gun, and kick one of my legs out. This left me in a rather awkward position, balancing on one leg and trying not to topple onto my back.

Kiritsugu finished me off with a knee to the back which lifted me off the ground, and slamming my own knife into my stomach, leaving me coughing heavily on the round, with bruises forming on both sides of my body. Laying their, I began to use a healing spell I had learned when we first began these exercises, as the old man watched.

Once the pain fade, I clawed my way back to my feet and began to stretch to make sure that I had gotten everything. Once that was done, I did one last stretch and turned to look at Kirtsugu, who was reloading his guns. "Alright," I said. "Now that we've done it normally, can I _please_ use magecraft this round?"

He didn't answer for several seconds, seemingly cleaning the barrel of one of his bloody hand-cannons. After several seconds of waiting, he looked up from his work, and began to aim the gun at the wall, most likely envisioning the gins aim. Finally, he responded. "Alright. And opened fire on me before I could get ready causing me to fall onto my back and roll to avid it.

As I rolled backwards to get back unto my feet, I focused on the image of myself staring of into the distance, making every detail as precise as possible. Then, the image's head whipped backwards, an arrow embedded between it's/my eye's. And my prana circuits opened.

Quickly, I formed a barrier of either clumps between between myself and Kiritsugu, the clay like substance taking on a blue glow as it took shape. The quarter sphere that appeared from my palm deflected the bullets(we had confirmed that it worked on real, and even enchanted ones, bullets before I was allowed to use this) while a steam of it slithered onto the ground, stretching out before taking a swipe at Kiritsugu, who jumped over it and pulled out another pistol.

I watched carefully to make sure it wasn't the contender. If it was the contender, than I'd loose if i did block the bullet, for obvious reasons. Seeing that it wasn't, I threw a glob of clay at his hand, though he dodged it and continued firing. Suddenly, Kiritsugu blurred out of existence, and re-appeared besides me, kicking at my ribs, forcing me to leave me shelter.

Rather than try to follow up physically, Kiritsugu continued to shoot at me, leaving me dodging bullets again. I waited as I hoped from foot to foot, waiting for the gap when he ran out of bullets, before suddenly a thunder-crack went off and my hair was sent whipping around as something shoot by my face and I froze in shock, wide eyed. I blinked twice, and looked behind me, before I realized what happened, and my shoulders slumped. "I got tunnel vision and you fired the contender through your jacket . . . meaning you used a real bullet."

"Yes."

"That wasn't a question, old man."

"I know." I sighed at his answer.

"Why did you shoot a _real bullet_ at my _head_?"

"You weren't focusing." he responded. "Is something distracting you?"

"You shot my with a real bullet, because I was distracted. Seriously?!" I snap. "You could have taken my head off!" 

"My aim is better than that."

"Not the point old man! Seriously!" I stomped over to one side of the circular room, opened panel in the wall and stomped out, Kiritsugu following behind me at a calm walk

"This isn't the first time I've shot live bullets at you. Why are you taking it so hard this time?" he asked. I didn't respond for a moment, simply marching down the halls of the bunker to tha ladder that led up to the trap door in the halls of the Emiya residence. When I got to the ladder, I finally responded.

"The other times you _warned_ me first, so I was ready for them. This time you just . . . Shoot at me!"

"That isn't the point, Kotora." Kiritsugu said, causing me to turn around suddenly.

"Then what was!?"

He sighed. "Normally, you would have just given me an unimpressed look and continued on like it was nothing. But today, you taking it . . . poorly. This isn't like you. Normally you don't worry about things like this, but over the passed few days, you've been working harder than normal, sleeping even less, and looking into much more advanced spells than what you normally focus on. I'm worried about you."

"Your worried about me, so you shoot me with a real bullet?" I ask flippantly.

"Would you forget the bullet and just tell me what's bothering you?" Kirtsugu slumps his shoulds like hes exausted himself . . . which may have something to do with it being after midnight and us having been going through various training exercises for the passed 2 and half hours . . .

I sighed heavily and put my hands in my pockets, my own shoulders slumped to match Kiritsugu's. "I guess . . . I don't feel like I'm strong enough."

Kiritsugu said nothing, just straightening his shoulder's, forcing me to take the initiative to elaborate myself.

After several seconds of eye contact, I leaned against the metal ladder behind me and continued. "I've told you before, I . . . " I was cut off by a knock on the door, causing both me and Kiritsugu to share a look, family drama momentarily forgotten.

Getting up, Kiritsugu walked out of the room, and I heard him open the door. "Taiga?" I heard his say, "What happened to you?"

A second later, he came back into the kitchen, assisting the moocher, who was stumbling around, looking unfocused, covered in dirt and bruises, and more than one bad scrape. Her clothes, a tiger-stripe dress and a black leather jacket, were badly torn, and she was holding what appeared to be a motorcycle's handlebars in one hand.

"Alright," I sighed, "what did she do this time?"

"I think she's drunk." he responded calmly.

"What do you mean she's drunk?" I snap back.

"I mean she's stumbling all over the place and her breath smells like cheep beer and sake." He responds dryly, Taiga seemingly trying to fall asleep on his shoulder, drooling.

I groan. "Ok, you clean her up, I'll call Raiga."

"Good idea."

* * *

POV: Taiga Fujimura

Taiga woke up to splitting headache. Rising to a sitting position she clutched her pounding cranium in both hands, gritting her teeth and letting out a moan that sounded like a big cat in pain. "What happened?" she she groaned.

She looked around for a moment, before she realized where she was. "Oh, this is the spare room at Kiri and Ko-chan's place . . . " she thought out loud as she got to her feet, nearly loosing her balance in the process. "and these are the spare pajamas I left here." she finished, looking at her plain green two-peace pjs, one hand on the wall to steady herself. "But what am I doing here?"

Putting one hand on her chin, she tried to remember what she had been doing the night before, which was made difficult by the body builder taking a sledge hammer to her frontal lobe. After a moment she perked up. "I was . . . oh yeah, I was going to that party! And then . . . and then . . . " she froze as the memories of the prior night came flying back to her.

Now sporting a rather panicked expression, she looked around rapidly, and, confirming no one was watching her, she rushed over to the drawers where she had spare clothes for emergency's. Slipping into a pair of socks to keep her sweaty feet from making noise on the Emiya residences floors and pulling on a jacket, she crept out the door slowly into the hall.

Looking around, she realised that the lights were all off and that it didn't seem like the sun was up. She knew that Kotora usually went to bed around three, and Kiritsugu was usually asleep before midnight, so she probably had at least an hour of so before they woke up.

Creeping down the hallway, she soon found herself at the door. 'almost there, now I just need to . . . ' she slowly reached for the doorknob, sweet dripping down her still pounding forehead. Just as her fingers brushed the handle, the light flicked on.

She froze, her whole body shivering. She slowly turned her head, to see Kiritsugu standing next to the door knob, his face impassive. Once their eye's met, Kiritsugu began to walk further into the hall, making Taiga have the turn around to keep looking at him.

Kiritsugu came to a stop behind his easy chair, which had apparently been moved to the part of the hall behind the door, which she hadn't noticed in the dark. He stood behind it, looking a lot like one of her grandpa's body guards, which only made Kotora, who was sitting in said chair, arms on the side's, hunched over like a mean old man, face hidden behind his hairs shadow, look more intimidating.

A movement in his lap made Taiga notice that the stray cat that had been hanging around for the last few weeks was now laying in Kotora's lap, looking at her with a certain gleam in it's eyes. The addition of the cat somehow gave the small boy the impression of a spy-movie villian.

"Taiga." Kotora said, his voice sounding calm and benevolent . . . in a cold-as-ice sort of way that send a shiver down her spine. He slowly looked up, the motion as smooth as silk, the cat tensing in his lap. His amber eye's burned into her like a hot iron, leaving her frozen in place, even as he smiled a saint-like smile. "I believe there's something you need to tell me."

Taiga performed a full body shiver, falling to her knees. "I'm sorry!" she yelped out without thinking.

The cat stood up and hopped unto the arm of the chair as Kotora rose smoothly to his feet, looking down on her, eye's half lidded, smile firmly looked into the "Heavenly-Benevolence" position, which did not match the aura coming off of – was-that-blue-fire-surrounding-him?!

"Oh?" he said in that angelic tone. "And what, pray tell, are you sorry for?" it was! It was blue fire!

"Perhaps," he continued as he took on step forward, oblivious to her thought's of the illusion surrounding him. "Your sorry that you told your poor, frail grandfather, that you were going to a sleep over, when in reality, you were going to a party?" She was shocked out of her thoughts on the fire as she registered what he said.

Oh no! He knew! And if he knew, the Kiri knew! And if Kiri knew, so did her gramps! What to do, what to-was that a figure coming out of the flames?!

Kotora continued unconcerned with her panic. "Or maybe, what your sorry about is . . . say, all the beer and sake you drank while you were at said part, despite knowing that neither the law, nor your grandfather, permit you to partake in them?" He accented this question with a slight tilt of his head and a hand to his chin.

Taiga, meanwhile, had her attention split between what he was saying, and the demonic, tiger-faced, kanabo wielding samurai that had emerged from the midnight-blue flames behind him, cutting off her view of Kirtsugu.

"Or mabey, maaabeeey," His voice began to loose it's angelic air, his eye's bored into her's, and a block of ice dropped into her stomach. "what your sorry for is how after getting horribly drunk, you dicided to sneak back home, and take your dear grandpa's _prized ANTIQUE motorcycle_ for a _test drive_." now all semblance of benevolence. "where, you proceeded to total it in a crash that could have _KILLED YOU_."

By now Kotora was standing right over her, looking down upon her kneeling for, which was bawling and shivering like a leaf in a wind storm as the amber eye's of both Kotora, and his burning, demon-samurai -tiger, border into her with intensity of portal to hell.

"But, no, Taiga." The benevolence was back, his eye's back to their calm, half lidded state. However, the cat that had been sitting on the chair jumped down and ran into another room, and Kirtsugu cover his ears. Not that Taiga could see either of these things.

"What you need to tell me is not "I'm sorry". The most heavenly smile yet graced his features . . .

"No, what you need to tell me . . . " Kotora inhaled deeply, his eye's sharpened and seemed to burst into flame themselves. Smoke leaked from his mouth, which now had rows of needle sharp teeth. Then, in usnison with an unbearably load roar from his monstrous illusion, he thundered out at a tone that put Thor to shame, "IS WHAT, IN FLIPPING! HELL! YOU! WERE! THINKIIIIIIING!"

That day, Taiga, as well as the majority of the neighbourhood, came to the cold realization, that Fuyuki City had TWO tigers.

* * *

**AN: 3:30 AM, April 29th, 2019. . . . Ok, that took longer than I hoped, but to be fair, on Thursday I decided I didn't like how it was going, erased it, and started from scratch. Now it's definitely better than it was, but . . . I feel it's not all it could have been.**

**On another note, I was planing to do a sort of data page at the end of the chapter . . . but seeing what time it is, I think I'll just react to the reviews and be done with it.**

**Doctor Doofenshmirtz: I guess I see your point, but that doesn't change the fact that he can conceivably generate explosions stronger than the average atomic bomb out of next to nowhere.**

**Soda-fiedPsycho: No that is not true magic, honestly, does not one read the wiki? Look the page for elements, under either. Or was that a joke off of how it's called "somewhat related to the first true magic?"**

**Loser Stuck In Memory Lane: Yeah, I'm sure as much as Shirou cared about Kiritsugu, basically having "A tool meant for battle" as the core of your being can't be good for social interactions, made worse by the survivors guilt and altruism. Glad you liked how I added more social interaction though!**

**O: I already knew that Shirou's element and origin are the result of Avalon's influence, or at least that there is a theory about that, I don't actually remember if that's canon or not, but I digress. I knew that already, but remember, Shirou lost everything in the fire. The only thing he still had at the end of it was his first name. In other words, he was a blank slate. My character is a self insert, and however much a change of bodies, ages, and a traumatic experience wouldn't be enough to completely re-write someones origin. Change it slightly, sure, but not compleatly. But, anyway, yes, I have an idea for his elements, and an origin I think matches me rather well, as well as ideas on how they would affect spell usage.**

**Ok? We done? Good, cause it is now almost four and I need to sleep. Goodbye.**


	4. Talks and Suppositons

**AN: 12:36 AM, April 30th, 2019. Ok, I've spent enough time responding to the Soda-fiedPsycho, time to start the next chapter!**

* * *

**POV: Kiritsugu**

Kiritsugu stood in total silence, staring impassively at the Yakuza Oyabun's granddaughter. The girl, in turned remained frozen stiff. This had been going on for the passed ten minutes or so, the result of Kotora screaming his head off at the poor girl for the better part of two hours. Honestly, it was a miracle that no-one had called the police.

As it was, Kiritsugu had been forced to break out the enchanted earplugs he had once used if he was going to be standing in the immediate vicinity of an explosive, and still been able to clearly make out what his son had been saying. _'Note to self: I need to update the boundary field to extend bunkers noise dampeners to the upper levels.'_

Really, he felt sorry for the girl, Kotora had been radiating something just short of blood-lust during the entire event. And while Kiritsugu had encountered much, much worse aura's before, comparing a nine year old to a veteran magi or dead apostle was rather uncomfortable. Of course, in the end it was her own fault. Kotora's reaction was more a result of concern than anything else.

When Taiga had walked into their house the night before, she had been suffering from a multitude of minor injuries, ranging from bad scrapes, to fractured bones to a minor concussion. It had been clear that, had Taiga landed differently after getting thrown off of the bike, she could have died. And Kotora was especially aware of that, as he was the one who healed the worst of said injuries. His reaction was just him trying to get it into her head how stupid she had been. Really, it would be kind of sweet . . . if it didn't involve one of their surrogate family members nearly dying.

Really, she brought it down on herself.

Kiritsugu noticed a blinking light in the metal coat rack next to the door's reflection. Turning to look behind him, he realized that the phone was blinking.

Realizing that he might have missed a call with his plugs in, he quickly rushed over to the phone, removing said audio obstructions from his ears. Checking, he saw that it was Raiga that had called, and quickly pressed the call-return button.

Putting the phone to one ear, he waited for someone to pick up . . . and immediately pulled the phone away from said ear as Raiga roared into the other end, proving just which side of the family Taiga got her growl from. Covering the ear piece, he waited for the Yakuza boss to empty his lungs before he put it back the ear. "Can I listen now, or are you going to try and burst my eardrums again?" he asked, only to be forced to pull it away from his ear again as the yelling resumed.

After several minutes of listening to the old man screaming Kiritsugu finally managed to get a word in. "Raiga, I understand how you feel . . . but I don't think Taiga can really handle more . . . well, to put it bluntly, Kotora screamed his head off at her for nearly two hours . . . yes, I said two hours. I know, I'm surprised at his lung capacity. Hmm? Well, Taiga hasn't actually moved since he finished. Yes, she's just . . . sat there, staring into the distance blankly, blinking every few seconds with tears streaking down her face . . . I think he may have traumatized her, honestly. No, Raiga, I'll give her a few more minutes before I try to"

'Spoosh!' "Gaaaa!"

"Never mind, Kotora just dowsed her in ice water, she's back up. I'll call you back later." Kiritsugu hung up before Raiga could continue. Turing to look at the now shivering Fujimura, he sighed. Kotora, who had already left the room, called from the kitchen in a cheerful tone that only made the girls shivering get worse. "Breakfast is pretty much ready, you two get in here!"

* * *

Kiritsugu and Taiga both sat in their respective places at the table, watching as Kotora put the last few touches on his work, smiling and whistling a jolly tune.

Taiga was still wearing her pajamas, and the jacket she had tried to slip out the door in. Both of which were soaked in ice water. She was also wearing a weary, nervous expression, like someone who expected to be attacked at any moment.

The boy walked into the dining room carrying the food on a single large tray, a massive smile on his face. Most people his age would have had a hard a hard time balancing the sheer volume of food on the wooden carrying tool, but Kotora had spent the better part of two years doing as much physical training as possible, and showed no signs of strain whatsoever, and placed the large volume of food on the table without so much as spilling any of the soup.

As his son began to set the table, Kirtsugu noted with some amusement that their breakfast consisted entirely of Taiga's _least_ favourite's.

Kotora devided the food into the usual portions, which is to say, a reasonable amount for Kiritsugu and himself, and all the rest for "the moocher". Said moocher looked less than pleased, for once. However, their most recent . . . conversation, still fresh in her mind, she chose to suffer in silence.

She shoveled the first bite into her mouth as if it was poisoned, which, if her face afterwards was any indication, it might have been. Swallowing with as shiver that racked her whole body, she began to squirm like she was resisting the urge to jump up, tears building up in her eyes.

Taking his own first bite, Kiritsugu found the most likely reason for Taiga's discomfort. Kotora like his food _spicy_, and had, today, decided to go all out with the seasonings.

Kotora, at that moment, turned to the poor girl, and with his angelic smile and demonic tiger-samurai both in full effect, chiped "Be sure to eat every last bite, Taiga-nee! I made it specially for you!"

And she suffered . . .

* * *

POV: Kotora

I sighed as I leaned back into my chair, head pounding. After the initial shock had worn off, I had spent the better part of the next hour worrying my head off at Taiga's condition. This lead into me spending hours planing how to tell her off for her little stunt. Also, It means i got no sleep. And I still had to talk to Kiritsugu . . .

It had been an hour since Taiga had left, to her own relief, and I had already done the dishes, sweeped the floors, and done every other chore I could think of to put it off, but the time for the talk with Kiritsugu had arrived. In light of this, I found myself sitting across from him in the living room, where the former magus killer sat in his recently returned tiger-print chair.

I groaned, then yawned, the action serving to further accent my state. Looking my adoptive parent in the eye, I asked. "Do we really have to do this now?" The old man didn't answer for a moment, just matching my gaze nursing a cup of tea I had mad him. After several minutes of waiting, I realized I wasn't going to get an answer and relented, my shoulders sagging. "Fine."

I leaned back into the chair, looking at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to explain the feeling that had plaged me the passed few days. Finally, I decided to begin with a question. "You remember when I told you . . . just how much I know, old man?" I asked, waving my had around me before resting my head on said hand.

Kiritsugu just nodded, waiting for me to continue. I jumped up to my feet, pacing back and forth in a rather stressed maner. "Types! Dead apostles! Servants!" I said loudly, waving my hands around in the air for emphasis. "Phantsmal beings! Demons! GODS!" I returned back to my chair and flopped down with a huff. "How am I supposed to feel . . . safe, when I know all that's out their? That were only one human sacrifice away from a world ending event?"

I sighed heavily, sliding partially out of my own chair, eyes once again focused on the ceiling. "I know, that it's stupid. I mean, why should I need to worry about things like that? It's not like I can change anything, but . . . " I trailed off. Straightening out, I leaned on my knees, looking at the ground between my feet. "I don't like feeling helpless. I felt helpless in the fire, and I don't want to feel that way again."

I clenched my hands into fists from their position on my legs, bunching up mu pants. "I can run faster than any other kid in town. I could probably knock out one of Raiga-ji's bodyguards with on punch. I can dodge bullets. I can USE MAGIC. And none of that makes me more than a particularly big bug in the grand scheme of things." I grit my teeth, liquid pooling in the sides of my clenched eyes as the stress forced me to tears. "I mean, it shouldn't be my problem! But, it feels like it is! And that's, that's . . . " I trailed off, hands to tightly clenched that I risked tearing holes in my pants.

After several seconds, I heard a world weary sigh. Forcing my tear-stained eyes open, I looked up at my adoptive parent, who was hauling himself out of his own chair. Walking over to me, got down on on knee and placed a hand on my shoulder. "I don't know what to say." he began, not meeting my eyes. "I know that anything I could possibly say is something that you've already thought of, Kotora. That's just the kind of person you are."

He turned his head, now looking me in the eye. "I won't lie to you, everything you just said is true. The chances of you ever being able to do anything about things like that, of ANYONE, being able to do anything at all, or so minuscule that there's no point thinking about the possibility."

He pulled me into a hug. "And I know, that you know, that that's not your fault." He sighed. "And you know that it's not your job to worry about these kinds of things. But . . . " Kiritsugu trailed off, and inhaled deeply.

"Kotora. You should focus on what you can do, and not what you can't. I know it's hard for you to acknowledge the dangers out there, but remember, every normal person in the world is forced to acknowledge to possibility of nuclear war. What your going through is not unique. The only difference is the nature of the threat. But, you know that to, don't you?" Kiritsugu sighed. "I understand that there isn't any good answer to your problem. The only thing to do is to keep living and hope for the best."

"But, if you keep pushing yourself the way you have the passed few days, then you will seriously hurt yourself. Your only a pre-teen, you shouldn't be using adults as the benchmark for your own strength its not healthy. You can break thick boards with your bare hands, and outrun anyone who isn't professional athlete. You should be satisfied with what you've accomplished already."

"The old man let go of me and stood up, patting me on the back. "I'm sorry if that isn't the answer you looking for, but it's the best I'm able to give you." He brushed the wrinkles out of his shirt. "Now, lets get you to bed, you've been awake for far to long already." he grabbed my hand.

I sighed my self, "Sure Dad . . . but . . . your wrong about one thing."

"Oh?" He raised one brow.

"Thoes people who live in fear of atom bombs. They don't have any chance of escaping their fear, because science has no real defence against a direct nuclear strike like that yet. But, there are means to beat all of the supernatural threats I'm scared of. It's not a question of "do the means exist?" it's a question of, "Can I do them?" or "Can I get access to them?"

* * *

POV: Kiritsugu

Kiritsugu leaned forward in thought, looking out into the courtyard of his home. He was sitting on the back steps of the porch, which, he felt, gave the best view of the gardens scattered around the courtyard. Kotora seemingly had an interest in decorative plants, and tried to make him by them whenever he could. The end result was a yard filled with everything from bamboo to ornamental plumbs standing alongside the original evergreens that dotted the yard.

Of course, the boys real obsesion seemed to be Bonsai tree's which he spent a good deal of his spare time attempting to make. No less than twenty fledgling(sapling) miniature trees sat in a neat row along the back fence.

Honestly the hobby was somewhat relieving to Kiritsugu, as it showed that the boy had interests beyond magecraft and combat.

The former magus killer frowned as a bitter sweet memory came to the forefront of his mind. One that was a source of conflict to him to that day.

* * *

Flashback

Kiritsugu paced up and down the halls of the building, shoes clacking on the hardwood floors in a rhythm as constant as any clock. His heart pounded in his chest, and while his breathing seemed controlled, the truth of the matter was he felt quite stressed.

It was a full four months since he had choose to take in Kotora as his foster father. In that time the two had settled into the old japanese style house, though there had been some hiccups along the way, sutch as the time he had set the kitchen on fire while making coffee, or the time that he had caused the toilet to back-up and overflow.

In the time the two had spent together, Kiritsugu had tried continuously tried to get the boy to open up about his past, however beyond a few slip ups here and there, such as mentioning how "His sister hated math", he remained largely silent on the subject, only saying he could never go back, and that it was best to put it behind him. Beyond those few clues, the only thing that he had managed to find was that the boy was an evangelical Christian.

That itself was somewhat concerning, as, as far as Kiritsugu was aware, while evangelical presence in japan increases since the end of the second world war, there were no such churches in Fuyuki's general vicinity. That gave the impression that he had to have come from a considerable distance away. That begged the question, why was he in Fuyuki?

While to boy seemed more or less removed from his life before the fire, his nu-explained history had a weighty affect on Kiritsugu's mind. Since Kotora had chosen to come with him, he had been trying to find the courage to tell the boy about his own past as a magus, however, hearing the boys refusal to talk about his history, and his hesitation to accept Kiritsugu's offer, the mage had lost his nerve, and been trying to get it back ever since.

"Oi, old man, is something wrong?" the voice of the source of his mental conflict sounded out behind him, almost making him jolt in surprise.

Turning around, he mentally chastised himself for getting so lost in thought. "No, Kotora-kun, I just have something on my mind at the moment." he said, trying to calm his beating heart. His fight or flight response was still set to full from the war.

"Oh." the boy responded, tilting his head to the side. "So, what's bothering you? Is it anything important?"

Kiritsugu closed his eyes for a moment and gathered his nerve. "Come on. This will be easier sitting down."

walking into the living room, Kiritsugu sat down with a slight huff, waiting for Kotora to take his place across from him. Once the boy sat down, he began. "Kotora, since you agreed to come with me, I've been trying to tell you something. I should have told you already, but I could never find the nerve." with a final, deep breath, Kiritsugu finally revealed the truth. "I am a magus."

Kotora blinked twice, inhaled deeply, and closed his eyes, face pointed downwards. For a moment worried the he wasn't taking the information well. Was he surprised? Scarred? Confused? Angry? Kiritsugu had already figured out that treating him like a ormal seven year old was a bad idea, his reactions were abnormally mature.

Kotora breathed deeply, and turned his head to look straight up at the roof, before looking Kiritsugu right in the eye with a shocking intensity, before saying the last thing the magus had expected. "I already knew that."

Kiritsugu's racing thoughts froze for a moment, before he managed to register what he had just heard. "What?" he muttered in shock.

Kotora clenched his fists, and kiritsugu felt the unmistakable pulse of prana that came with someone opening their magic-circuits. "Your Kiritsugu Emiya. The magus killer. I've known since you introduced yourself."

A block of ice dropped into Kiritsugu's stomach. His thought flew into a hurricane as he tried to make sense of what he had just heard. A thousand questions seemed to leap to mind, but the only one that he could manage to voice was, "why?"

Kotora tilted his head to the side. "Why what?"

Kiritsugu inhaled deeply, held it for a moment, then breathed out before re stating his question. "Why would you come with me if you knew who I was?"

Kotora looked down at his feet for a long moment, which did nothing for Kiritsugu's frayed nerves, before he looked back up at him. "I had nowhere else to go. I couldn't go back, and I didn't know what else I could do. And, besided . . . you looked so desperate, I couldn't say no to you. I didn't really care who you were. I didn't think someone with that look in their eye's could hurt me."

Kiritsugu did his best to steady his heart as he took in the boys words. While he was still from coming to terms with what he had just heard, the more practical part of his mind had listened to the emotional sides insistence that there was no harmful intent in the boy's revelation, and was now pushing him to find out what else the boy knew. "How do you know about me?"

Kotora looked away from him. "I learned about you the same way I learned about magecraft. And dead apostles. And demons, and deamons, and all those things. I was told about them to "inspire" me." Kotora did the kind of huffing laugh one does when laughing at something that is clearly _not_ funny.

"Guess that fear is supposed to be a good motivator. Of course, I don't actually know that much about mage-craft itself. My limit is turning on my circuits and the few spells so basic I figured them out on my own with basically no outside input."

The boy proceeded to project what appeared to be a glass sphere in the palm of his hand and then crush the fragile sphere bare handed, the object turning into blue molts of prana in an instant. "Beyond that, I have no practical knowledge."

The mechanical side of Kiritsugu's mind whirled into action, trying to decipher the information he had been given to form a logical narrative.

Why would he know about magecraft? He must have a relative who taught him, most likely his parents. But why would they teach him so little, assuming the boy was telling him the truth? The boy had mentioned a sister, he may have not been the first choice inherit the family craft, at which point he would be kept away from megecraft as much as possible so as the avoid him being a threat the the heir. But why would they tell him of so many dangerous things? To dissuade him from the life of a magus? Then why would he claim that is was supposed to be inspiration?

Kiritsugu puzzled over the last thought for a good few seconds, before Kotora tapping him one the shoulder. "Oi, old man, you alright? You look kind of like your having a panic attack here." that snapped him out of it, causing him to return to the moment at hand.

Realizing that now was not the time to make theory's about Kotora's past, he turned his focus towards what this meant for the future. He had intended to tell Kotora about magecraft only to ensure that he was prepared for the event of an encounter with Kiritsugu's past life, however, it seemed that he was more aware than he had given him credit for. The only question that mattered right now was . . .

"So what now?" Kiritsugu sighed out.

Kotora, in response, gave him a confused look. "What do you mean, "what now"?"

"What do we do now?"

" . . . I still don't get what your saying. Why should anything change at all? I mean, I knew from the start. All that's changed is that you know that I know. The only thing thats differnet is I'm gona ask a lot more questions about . . . Oi, old man, what are you doing? Hey! Don't hug me so hard! Your breaking my back here! Let go already!"

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Flashback End

Kiritsugu shook his head fondly at the memory. He had ended up moving from a foster parent to an adoptive parent less than two weeks later.

After said adoption, Kotora had become much more confrontational about magecraft. At first Kiritsugu had been reluctant to teach him anything, but is soon became apparent what the boy had meant when he called his fears an "inspiration". The boy absolutely _despised_ the 'flight' part of 'fight or flight'. So, when he was told about something that he couldn't possibly defeat, then his automatic response was to try and find a way to do just that.

In his own words, "Humans aren't built to outrun, or hide from our enemies. Wear built to crush opponents with ranged offence and outlast them with superior endurance. If our only options are "run" and "hide", then we've practically already lost."

Of course, the idea that whoever had taught him magic had been taking advantage of the boy's "fight before flight" mentality contradicted his initial theory of them trying to scare him away from the moonlit world. In light of this, Kiritsugu had developed a new theory, tho the boy refused to confirm either it nor it's predecessor.

The new theory was that him and his sister, the only relative he had confirmed the existence of to date, were evenly matched. That is to say, they were both equally suited to inherit the family craft. In resoponce, he and his sibling were pitted against one another. This would explain why the only times Kotora mentioned said sister, it had been to declare himself better than her in some way, which would be notable to him if what decided the boys ability to fight back would be his superiority over her.

That would also explain why he had such an in-depth knowledge of certain topics, such as basic science and advanced mathematics, but next to no knowledge of others, such as history. The most vital ability of a magus was the ability to learn, force feeding a child information to see how well they adjusted to it to determine their ability as a magus.

They boy's constant reiteration that he "couldn't go back" most likely meant that he had ultimately failed his tests. Kotora had mentioned that he had extreme difficulty understanding chemistry. An alchemy focused family would, in fact, consider that crippling. The only thing left unanswered was how he ended up in fuyuki, which could have many dozens of explanations.

Of course, in the end, he supposed, Kotora's past was off little consequence. Especially if he himself didn't want to talk about it.

Kiritsugu was knocked out of his mussing by the sound of a door opening down the hall, and realized that his son must have woken up from his nap. Pulling himself to his feet, he went to check in on him. Hopefully, he wouldn't want to jump back into training, he hadn't actually taken a day off in several weeks.

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**AN: 3:08 AM, May 28th, 2019. Ok, that took way to long. Didn't work on this chapter for like, three weeks straight. Wrote the first . . . five hundred words? Then just nothing until last Monday. Of course, I do have some excuse. The day I stopped writing, I had a bad night that threw off my sleeping scheduled for the following week. And, by the time I get it back under control, I get a new job. The fact that I started watching Bungou Stray Dogs somewhere in the middle their just added to the problem. But, hey, at least I managed it, right? Ok, so reviews!**

**beingLazy: If archer actually shows up, still arguing on that, then I may end up making him super OP(at least compared to his canon strength).**

**Soda-fiedPsycho: Already replied to you in a PM, and you responded, so I don't think I need to say anything here. But thanks for the detailed review anyway!**

**Guest: I'm still arguing with myself over what else I should add. To be blunt, I, at surface level at least, perfer Kara no Kyoukai to Tsukihime, but I'll admit that my knowledge of either series is limited to fanfics, the wiki pages, and what I can find on youtube. Though, the fic "That Nostalgic Summer Rain" has swaid me even more heavily, though, again, my lack of knowldge on the series makes it hard to do anything for fear of a plot hole(I don't like contradiction canon, unless it's part of the plot)**

**So, I'd say that that covers everything! Watch out, the next chapters when everything start's for real.**


	5. Jogging into the Risky and Cliche

**AN: 1:13 AM, Mat 29th, 2019. What, ten hours and only one new review? You guys trying to break my spirit? Oh well, I'll just have to try harder this chapter, guess there was nothing to talk about last one.**

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**POV: Kotora**

I woke up from my nap at the usual time, just before mid afternoon. Getting out of bed, I stretched my arms out above me, feeling my back shoulder pop satisfyingly back into place. I braced against the wall, and did a few leg stretches, touched my toes a couple of times, before moving on to upper body stretches.

It had been about a week since the . . . "Tiger Crash" incident(I was still trying to come up with a good name for it). In the aftermath of said incident, Taiga had gotten screamed at by me, her grandfather, her guards, her teacher, her principal, and the police, was officially grounded for the next six months, and wasn't allowed to apply for a drivers license until she was twenty three.

To be honest, I did feel kind of sorry for her, I mean, sure she nearly killed herself with her own stupidity, but the life just seams drained out of her. She shuffles around like she's constantly nervous, she's acting abnormally passive, and she even lets me call her "tiger" without freaking out! It just feels . . . wrong. Like, seriously. If she doesn't get some backbone back, someone may start taking advantage of her!

. . . Ok, unlikely, but after treating her like a sister for years, I had developed an overprotective streak over the girl. Toss in the fact that she was younger than me(or even my real sister) mentally, and you get what amounts to a big brother complex compacted into a nine year old body, ready to beat up any potential suitors. Taiga found it cute. Raiga found it endearing. Kiritsugu found if nerve racking, wondering if he was going to get a call from the police about his son collapsing someones rib-cage.

Honestly, my past self would probably have reacted differently, but I just chalk that up to different genetics. Sure, the "Nurture" part of my personality was unchanged, but the "Nature" part was radically different. Not to mention the fact that I couldn't be sure that certain parts of my brain were finished developing(said development usually happening around twelve) so that could have an affect on my personality as well.

I realized that I was mentally rambling to myself, and shook my head to clear my thoughts. I did a few more stretches, before exiting my room. Walking down the hall, I came to the living room, were Kiritsugu was watching what I _think_, was a soap opera on TV. Never seen the appeal of those.

I walk passed him without saying hello, going into the kitchen to prepare my lunch . . . breakfast? My sleeping habits make labelling meals weird. Seeing as their was no tiger to feed for lunch, I saw no reason to make the usual in depth meals that I did for breakfast and dinner, and just made a fruit milkshake with the blender.

After finishing my drink, I returned to the living room. "Hey, old man." I said out loud, waiting for Kiritsugu to look up from his show. "I'm going out for a run. That Ok with you?" I asked. Getting a short nod in response, I went to the door and began to put my running shoes on.

Once I had them securely on my feet, I took off running right from the door-frame, barely avoiding slamming the door in my rush. I hadn't exercised beyond by basic stretches and warm-ups since me and Kiritsugu had had our talk, so I had a lot of pent up energy to let out.

I shot off at speeds that were more commonly seen in bikes than humans, feet hammering the concreate several times a second. The one time I had times myself, I found that I was running roughly twenty miles per hour. And this was my version of a vigorous jog.

Of course, I was well aware that that was nothing special. One thing that had become apparent after only a few months here was that this was, by my standards, a super-human world. And everyone knew it.

Watching a world champion martial arts tournament had made me wonder if I was at risk of running into Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple. I watched I documentary where where they showed the skeleton of Moby-dick(who was very real here). It was a hundred and fifty feet long. Twelve foot tall bears. People wrestling said bears. People shattering thick trees with one kick. All something that people here _know_ happens.

From what I've seen, people like Kirie? They aren't uncommon. Sure, they're not easy to find, but when you have sixty four people, each of whom could probably match the exorcist blow for blow, meeting up every year for a tournament straight out of Insert martial arts anime here: ? Yeah, I could find out what level I needed to reach pretty easily.

As I reach a turn in the road, I here the sound of a motor cycle coming up the road. Looking over my shoulder, I noticed someone come to a stop in front of the red triangle sign, I recognized the bike as belonging to one off Raiga-ji's men, who's name I couldn't remember. Sharing a nod with the man helmeted, I motioned that I wanted to race, which from his body language, he found funny. After a second of his shoulders shaking, which I assume was him laughing, he nodded.

I walked back until I was right beside him, and grabbed a rock off the ground, showing it to the man, who nodded when he understood what I meant. I threw the rock straight up in such a way that I was clearly visible, but wouldn't get in the way of his wheels when it hit the ground.

The second the rock hit the ground, I took of running and the biker revved his bike. I held the lead for the first three seconds before he passed me, taking a reasonable lead before I redoubled my efforts in an attempt the catch up. After about ten seconds of cruising, The biker casually looked over his shoulder for a second before looking back ahead. Then, he did it again, his gaze lingering on me for a bit longer.

Then, finally, after about another three seconds, he seemed to realize that I was still less than thirty feet behind him and did a full on double-take that made his bike swerve and forcing him to slow down to regain control. I took advantage and nearly passed him before he re accelerated, quickly regaining the lead. When got to the end of the long straight stretch we were on, he pulled over and waited for me to finish. Considering that he hadn't gotten off his helmet when I got there, I'd say I did a pretty good job.

I put both hands on my knees as I panted, the motions shaking my whole body. The slight pain of my lungs took my mind off of the gallons of sweet dripping down my body like rain.

The man walked up to me, helmet carried under one arm, letting me see his grey hair and eyes. "Hey, your Kiristugu's kid right? Kotora?" he asked, crouching down to my level I nodded in response to his question, before spitting to the side to get the thick layer of slime covering the inside of my mouth. "You ok? You were really moving. Your heart hurting?" I shook my head.

"I'm alright." I responded, still panting heavily. After a nother few seconds of the heavy breathing, I forced myself to stand back up straight. "I just haven't really put my all into running in a while. I usually stick to speeds where I can turn fast, or just try and improve my endurance."

I brushed off my body, more out of self consciousness than any need to clean off my clothes. "I just . . . really needed to see what I could do."

"Well," the man scratched the back of his head, looking over his shoulder at his bike, before back to me. "I'd say that your pretty fast. I was going the speed limit, so you kept up pretty well." I smirked a little, before I went back to panting.

After a few seconds, I felt confident enough in my breathing to talk again. "Thanks, I want to actually be able to keep up with those guy's on the WMAT. Kinda a high bar, so I needed a confidence boost. Now I just need to find something to punch really hard." I laugh a little, before me and the man fall into an awkwars silence. " . . . Sorry, I've forgotten your name."

"Hmm? My name's Sugawara, Sugawara Matsuyo. I'm one of . . . "

"Old man Raiga's bodyguards, I know, I remembered that much." I cut him off. "I just always think of you as the "The guy with the bike, and it was annoying. I'm trying to get better at remembering names, I seem to have trouble with that." I shrug my shoulders. "Well, it was nice talking to you, but I need to get back to running. Bye!" I start jogging away, waving over my shoulder.

I suppose that was kind of rude, but I've never been the most social person, and what I should do during interactions often escapes me. Usually I end up coming off as rude, overly blunt, or uninterested. That's actually why I get along so well with Kiritsugu and Taiga. Kiritsugu's not on for conversation, more being just as much the "strong silent type" as me, and Taiga's an extrovert, so I don't need to contribute much to the conversation to keep it interesting.

I here the sound of the Motorcycle's engine roaring as Matsuyo passes me again, waving one handed back at me as he turns the corner. I waved back, before going back to pumping my arms in tandem with my steps.

As I run, I specifically choose a route that I know has a series of potential obstacles to try and get past, as well as things I could use to gauge my progress. For instance, the fence I climbed to test my climbing speed, of the dotted line in the road I used to judge my jump length. Finally, the tall, street side tree with branches roughly five feet apart that I used to judge my jump height.

As I reached said tree, I did a powerful leap, attempting to reach the height of the third branch. I failed, and couldn't tell if I had done better or worse than the last time I had made the attempt. That put me off a bit, but I reminded myself that technically, taking the mywhatchacallit . . . real world? . . . my home timeling? . . . into account, I had just broken several world records. _'Still not good enough to challenge the apex of your age group in this world, though.'_ the cynical side of my mind spoke up. Damn eight-year old sixteen foot jumping Mario fans . . .

Shaking those thoughts from my mind, I put on another burst of speed, realizing that I had slowed down. I was now over two thirds of my way through the run, having passed the half way point and now being on my way back home.

However, as I grew closer, I found myself slowing to a stop as I came across a scene that was . . . well, cliche. Three boys surrounding a small figure on the ground.

"She's so creepy!" one boy roughly my age, mabey a little older, said as he poked a purple haired girl with a stick as she laid on the ground. Considering the position of the one of the other boys, I'd say they had pushed her over.

_'Brilliant.'_ I groaned mentally. _'The "main character heroically beats up bully's" scene.'_ I sighed out loud as I advanced on the group. Not like I could just ignore it, cliche-ness or no.

"Hey!" I shout as I get withing thirty feet, catching the attention of the boys. "What the hell are you idiots doing?!"

"What?" lead boy asked, looking confused.

"What did that girl do to you?!" I asked walking right up to them, hands held out to my sides in a gesture that clearly displayed a "what the heck" feel to it. It was at this point that I caught sight of the victim here. Sakura Matou. Of course.

Waving that off mentally, I had half suspected it already, I continued my verbal assault. "No, seriously, what was it? Cause it looks pretty bad!"

The lead kid looks confused. "We were just, we . . . "

"You were what?!" I snap, lips pressed together into a line and eyes opened as wide as possible as I got right up into his face.

"We were, we . . . she's creepy! Just look at her! She has purple hair, and her eye's are like a dead fishes! She's a total freak!"

I face palm in response, dragging my hand down my face dramatically wile giving the now somewhat nervous looking boys an unimpressed look. "Seriously? Your picking on a girl cause she's _creepy_?" I sigh in an annoyed tone, before looking lead kid right in the eye and planting my right hand on top of his head. "You do know that it's usually a bad idea to pick on creepy people right?" I ask him in a patronizing tone.

"What?" he snaps confusedly, trying to knock my hand off of his head, only to find that he couldn't so much as budge my fingers from their current placement.

"It's a bad idea to pick of creepy people." he flinched and yelped in pain as I dug my fingers into his skull, slowly beginning to pull the boy up onto tip toes. "Did you ever think that you may find them creepy because they were dangerous? Snakes are creepy, and their dangerous! Spiders are creepy, and some off them are dangerous!" I put on a somewhat off balance smile that I had previously been told was unsettling. "I've been told I can be creepy, and Me? I, am _very_ dangerous."

The kid began to struggle, both hands trying to pry my fingers off of his head as I lift him higher, forcing to kid onto one foot's tippy toes in an attempt to ward off the pain in his neck from being all but dangled by his skull.

"So," I continued, giving him a look that displayed a slightly insane curiosity. "You really shouldn't pick on creepy things. Could get you hurt someday." I raise on hand and catch a rock that had been thrown at my by one of the other boys. Turning to look at it, I raise one eyebrow, before looking the, now very nervous, boy who had thrown it in the eye.

"Yes," all the boys flinched as a 'crack!' resounded through the air. Slowly the boys eye's drifted down to the rock clenched in my left hand as it began to crackle and pop, cracks beginning to spread over the surface. I suddenly increased the pressure I was applying on the rock, causing it to shatter completely with a 'pop!' All four boys flinched, which to one I was holding immediately regretted if his flinch was anything to go by, and the still mobile three began to back away from me.

"Picking on creepy things could really get you hurt. Maybe even . . . killed?" as I said "Killed", three things happened. One, I put on the creepiest, most yokai-ish smile I was capable of. Just like just like Raiga-ji taught me. Two, I unleashed the full weight of my killing intent, making me take on a bordering demonic appearance and forming the illusion of some form of monster right behind me. Just like Raiga-ji taught me. Three, I let go of the boys head, letting him fall flat on his ass as he got a face full of demonic illusion, sending him and his buddies scrambling home to their mothers with soiled pants bawling their eyes out. Just like Raiga-ji taught me.

I watch the boys run away for a few seconds, until the last on turns the corner of the street and disappear from view. I roll my eyes before turning to the girl on the ground and offering her a hand. "Need some help?" I asked, smiling a smile that doesn't reach my eyes, which still held hint's of aggravation at the boys from earlier.

Sakura(or at least I assume it's Sakura, purple hair, purple eyes, dead expression) stares at my hand for a moment, before tentatively taking it. I pull her up to her feet and begin to brush the dirt off of her pale violet dress. "Really, what was wrong with those kids? You don't beat someone up just because you don't like how they look." I grumble as I get the last of the dirt off of her.

After several seconds of somewhat awkward staring, I offer her my hand again."I'm Kotora, by the way. Nice to meet you . . . " I trail off, waiting for her to say her name.

She stared at my open hand for a moment, before a bit of life seemed to enter her eyes, and she shook it. "I'm Sakura," she said tone mostly void of emotion.

"Nice to meet you Sakura, would you like me to . . . " I began to offer to walk her home(I knew for a fact that we actually lived relatively close to one another, so it wouldn't have been a hassle), however, my offer was cut off by a voice from behind us, forcing me to fight off the urge to turn around suddenly(as I was still holding Sakura's arm, and could probably dislocate it if I wasn't gentle).

"Hey! That was pretty impressive!" a voice belonging to a boy not much older than myself. Slowly, I let go of Sakura's hand and turn around to look at whoever was talking to me.

My eye's widen in slight shock as they meet with a set of ruby red irises that are, admittedly, one of the most stunningly beautiful things I've ever seen. Hair that was literally the colour of gold graced his head, and his broad smile revealed teeth that were so bright that describing them as "pearly" would be a disservice. He wore a simple royal purple T-shirt that left his belly-button exposed, a white jacket, and some very baggy pants that seemed to be made of silk.

As I took the stranger's appearance in, I realized that I recognized them, and my stomach dropped into my feet. My heart rate accelerated by what had to be an order of magnitude, and the only thing that kept me from freezing up, was the _wave _of shear _respect_ that flowed through me just looking at him. Afterwards, looking back on said reaction, I would attribute it to A+ ranked charisma, but in the moment, all I could think of was how pleasing it was to have _Gilgamesh of Uruk_ compliment me, child form or no.

"Thanks!" I said cheerfully, smiling brightly, showing my own pearly whites.

I response to my pleasant reaction, Gilgamesh aproached closer, still smiling, and offered me a handshake. "I'm Gil, nice to meet you! You said your Kotora, right?"

"Yeah, that's right. Nice to meet you, Gil!" I shook his hand heartly, not holding back as much on my stregnth as I probably should have, but hey, Gilgamesh could probably take it.

"Where did you learn that trick with the Killing intent? Where your eyes went to slits and that samurai thing showed up behind you? It was awesome!"

It was fortunate the answer to said question did nothing to implicate my connection to Kiritsugu, as I don't think I could have lied to him under the affects of the all encompassing presence that was A rank Charisma.

"My gramps, Raiga-ji, taught me that about a year ago. Took me a bit to get, but it was such a cool trick I just had to learn it! Nearly gave the old man a heart attack when I showed him."I smirked at that. Kiritsugu had know about KI manifestations, but never learned himslef. They were only really useful as an intimidation tactic. Seeing how Kiritsugu's main MMO was taking advantage of other's overconfidence, a scare tactic wasn't that useful.

"Your Grandpa taught you? What Kind of Grandfather do you have?" Gil asked curiously, one eyebrow raised.

I looked either way, like there may be someone watching, before leaning in close an whispering in his ear. "Don't tell anyone, but he runs the yakuza!"

Gil's eyes went wide and he pulls back and gives me a surpised look. "Really that's so cool!"

"Yeah. Of course, he can be total weirdo when he wants to be. Real eccentric, not as bad as big sis but . . . " I trailed off as my Charisma high brain regestered something it hadn't noticed until now. "What's with the brief case?" I asked, tilting my head curiously.

"Oh! My guardian is sending on a vacation in Hawai for a whole month! He literally can't say no to me . . . " A look of realization overtook Gil's features. "Oh! What time is it!? I need to be on the plane by five! Sorry, it was nice to meet you!" He took of running in the direction he came from, leving me to try and recover my thoughts as the Charisma High wore off.

I starred blinking for a few seconds, before I remembered Sakura. I turned around and found her staring off after where Gilgamesh had been a few minutes before.

"Sorry!" I said. "I forgot all about you! That Kid had quite the presence . . . are you listening to me?" I waved a hand in front of here face, getting no response. I tapped her on the shoulder. Still no response. "Hey, you alright? Hello?" I shook her shoulder gently, finally getting a response out of her.

"Huh?" She shook her head like she had just come out of a day dream. Realizing I was staring at her rather intently, she broke out in a blush, and her eyes finally had a level of vitality to them. "O-oh! I'm sorry! Just . . . who was that?" she looked down at her feet as her blush deepend.

"He said his name was Gil." I responded. "Looked like a rich kid to me . . . but he knew about intent illusions, so there's probably something more to it than that."

From her expression, I'd say that she didn't know what to to with that information, so to distract her from it, I offered her my hand again. "Anyway, I do believe that I was offering to walk you home."

She looked at me confused for a second, before what I said seemed to register, and nodded slowly. "Ok . . . that would be nice." she took my hand and we began walking. I, obviously, let her lead, seeing as it would be awkward to explain why I knew where she lived when we had only just met today.

As we walked, I thought over that _very_ unexpected meeting with the King(prince?) of Heroes. My mind ran over what had happened several times, but always settled on one vital piece of information. _'Gilgamesh will be out of town for a whole month, huh?'_

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**AN: 3:59 AM, June 10th, 2019. Ok, that took about three days longer than I wanted, but hey, better than last time. Seeing as it is currently four in the morning, I can't think of anything witty to say, so let's just move on the the reviews.**

**emiya unlimited blade works: I was thinking along thoes lines myeslf. The main problem is, how do I get them to meet without it seeming like an ass-pull?**

**Nemma Amiry: I'm sorry about that.**

**. . . Ok, that it? Ok, Going to bed now. Thank God I have afternoon shift . . . **


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